October is a good month to watch horror movies and read scary stories, but I read my scary stories over the summer and ...
October is a good month to watch horror movies and read scary stories, but I read my scary stories over the summer and my cohabitants do not permit the freedom to watch scary movies when I like (which actually isn’t that often—I’m too scared of them).
In other news, I did begin a “Short Story Month” project in which I vowed to read a story each day and write a blog post on each. The first part I was almost able to completely fulfill. The second part was a little too ambitious, although I’ve certainly written more this month than I have in the past few months. Most of the stories that are marked as links can be followed to corresponding posts.
Undoubtedly, the best film that I watched was Synecdoche, New York. I’m disappointed I hadn’t watched this before. Charlie Kaufmann and Philip Seymour Thomas. Hot damn!
10/1
Tolstoy, War and Peace, 5 pp.
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 20 pp.
10/2
Great British Baking Show, 8.2 (hereafter GBBS): This is the episode in which perpetual straight man Paul Hollywood joins Noel Fielding (not Redding) and Matt Lucas to enact a hilarious joke about the handshake, albeit one that offended some viewers.
Sidereus Nuncius, 5 pp.
10/3
Troy (1994), 30 minutes: I wonder why I decided to watch some of this, when this film is so laughable at its best moments and at its worst … I wanted it see the scene at the beginning when Achilles takes on the Thessalonians solider and dispatches him easily and then I skimmed foreword to the scene where the Myrmidons storm the beach and raid Apollo’s temple.
10/4
GBBS, 8.1: That is not a mistake. I watched the second episode before I watched the second.
Chiang, “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling”: The first of several stories read for the sake of Short Story Month, as celebrated on this site.
Machado, 10 pp.
10/6
Hebel, “An Unexpected Reunion”
Chiang, “The Great Silence”
10/8
Donald Barthelme, “Cortés and Montezuma”
Natalia Ginzburg, “The Mother”
Machado, 20 pp.
10/9
James Baldwin, “Going to Meet the Man”
Troy, the remainder
Aeneid, 10 pp.
GBBS, 8.3
10/10
William Trevor, “Beyond the Pale”
Angel of the Skies (2013): Direct-to-video, for sure. My son really liked it. His credentials as an aesthete are clearly lacking.
Machado, 10 pp.
10/11
William Trevor, “Beyond the Pale”: Read it a second time.
Michel Tournier, “Death and the Maiden”
Machado, 30 pp.
10/12
T. Coraghessan Boyle, “Greasy Lake”: He looks like the kind of guy that would write a story like this, albeit in jest.
Wolfgang Borchert, “Do Stay, Giraffe”
Kuhn, 15 pp.
10/13
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Kuhn, 20 pp.
Chiang, “Omphalos,” 5 pp.
10/14
Kuhn, 40 pp.
Chiang, “Omphalos,” finished
Second meeting of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions Reading Group
10/15
Keller, “The Little Dance Legend”
GBBS, 8.4
10/16
Chiang, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” 30 pp.
10/17
Chiang, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” rest
Fontane, “A Lady of My Years,” 10 pp. both German and English
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
10/18
Fontane, “A Lady of My Years,” finished
Machado, 10 pp.
10/19
Finished Machado
Wolfgang Borchert, “Do Stay, Giraffe”: After reading about Borchert on Wikipedia I decided to give this story another read.
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 5 pp.
Color Adjustment (1992)
10/20
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
Arthur Schnitzler, “Blind Geronimo and his Brother”
NYRB on bad hero returns book
Emil Lasker, Chess Strategy, 15 pp.
10/21
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
10/22
Tolstoy, 20 pp.
10/23
Notorious (1946): While reading The Philosophical Hitchcock, among the films to which Pippin referred was Notorious, which I expect I have not watched since the 1990s. The frequency of references made me think I needed to consider this film again, which my intellectual posterity had not revisited.
Thomas Mann, “A Difficult Hour”: As if Schiller needed more hero worship!
GBBS, 8.5
10/24
Back to the Future (1985)
Julio Cortázar, “Bestiary”
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
Tolstoy, 15 pp.
10/25
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
Ingeborg Bachmann, “Everything”
Ben Lerner, The Topeka School, 20 pp.
10/26
Kafka, “Before the Law,” “The Gate at the Manor House”
Lerner, 20 pp.
Merleau-Ponty, 10 pp.
10/27
A DAY OF NO CONSUMPTION …
10/28
Kuhn, 50 pp.
Kafka, “A Little Fable,” “A Commentary”
Bachmann, “Everything”
10/29
Finished Kuhn
Chinua Achebe, “The Sacrificial Egg”
Ilsa Aisinger, “The Bound Man”
The Queen’s Gambit, 1: Did I mention that I play chess?
10/30
The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Progeny.
Lerner, 35 pp.
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
The Queen’s Gambit, 2
10/31
The Last Jedi (2017): Kinder, Kinder, Kinder.
Heinrich Boll, “The Railway Station at Zimpern”
Lerner, 30 pp.: I’m done with this book. 90 pages is enough.
Merleau-Ponty, 5 pp.
October is a good enough reason to watch scary movies. Like the vice presidential debate…
"The Kremlin Ball" narrates time Malaparte spent in Moscow during the late 1920s and the…
Greatest hits of September undoubtedly include Curzio Malaparte's unfinished novel "The Kremlin Ball"; they do…
Kept reading The Overstory" and should have finished it. Started "Homicide: Life on the Street"…
Going to a museum has always been an experience like going to church. Same reverence,…
Greatest hits: the Netflix Ripley series, "Blood and Wine" with Jack Nicholson, "Geology: A Very…